What could be a stress-free MUD with a refreshingly open-ended character
creation system of bountiful race options is marred by a crude mishandling and
gross misinterpretation of expectations and obligations on the part of the human
element. If you expect a professional level of primary responsibility, don't
look for it here. While there may be plenty of monsters to slay and a very
broad range of characters to play as in terms of species, the whole premise is
instead limited by infantile moderators who lack the pulse of what their target
demographic is actually seeking. There are some great features conducive to
variant roleplay, and even an experience system doled out to reward players for
roleplaying (presumably without human-driven bias), but these innovations become
sorely pressured by the severe amount of practical flaws at hand here.

Let's get the technical issues out of the way first. There are still a lot of
missing help files and mountains of typographical errors, and the mapping is
bloated, disjointed and easily distracted to the point where areas don't appear
to logically fit together. Now, online games are always going to experience
consistent development because they're intrinsically organic. They're prone to
change all the time. We know this. The pacing of the work is the crucial issue
here: While much of the mechanics still need fixing, the focus instead has
turned to building outlying areas, a feature which is not in such a crucial
status as other fundamental elements of the game. In actuality, when a portion
of the system is exposed for its flaws, the staff has routinely shoveled over it
entirely: Certain whole classes are essentially hidden, and an otherwise-
innovative breeding system for creating complex racial hybrids has been disabled
and ignored. Another such example indicative of the staff's eclectic thought
process is in trying to divert traffic by cordoning off an area: This just
moved the heavy traffic issue one room away (to a more bottle-necked area, with
more NPCs and objects standing about).

This MUD seems to have digressed heavily from the first and foremost rule of any
software which caters to end users: User-friendliness is attained by adhering
to intuition. This especially pertains to terminology in the help files which
is misleading, inconsistent, or non-specific. Several features have a one-
direction-only error: One cannot opt back out of Player Killing. This even
affects maps, shockingly enough: Many maps do not logically follow physical
rules of connecting two rooms together, which becomes multifold due to a bizarre
gimmick where commands to recall to a set area are inexplicably disabled. These
grievances ultimately punish players for exploration, particularly as any area
can be warped to, with other towns remaining empty and set next to each other.
Remnants of old changes still linger to produce inconsistency errors which can
alternate between player characters. Some characters still recall to an older
location, but this claim mainly pertains to so many arbitrary changes to an
already terribly inefficient and mind-boggling inventory and equipment system
which necessitates the use of spreadsheets to coordinate a character's possible
outfits.

The emotional state of the MUD has to be rated at no less than 'drama hell'.
It's not unheard of for new players to receive abuse when driven to using the
Help channel when confounded by some of the more counter-intuitive terminology
and functionality of the game's mechanics. Red flags show up concerning a
counterargument by the staff stating that simply because the game is free to
play that they are somehow merited no obligation to validate player concerns.
This is as if to imply via power-drunk, almost Orwellian double-speak that they
are infallible so long as they don't outwardly project this subconscious
egocentricity. This is textbook psychology stuff. This puerile attitude
amounts to a self-serving tyrannical playground hosted solely for the benefit of
the 'Immortals', where new players are permitted to suffer at their mercy. This
even extends into 'global roleplays', where players are subjected to game-wide
messages (essentially a non-interactive playlet) which routinely involve
unmitigated over-the-top events of adult-oriented violence such as infant
mutilation and rhetoric praising the game's deities which appear to be named
after older game moderators who have not visited the server since before this
reviewer's memory. Further example of moderator abuse lies in their choosing to
hide from other players and responding to their duties by using an invisibility
function, rendering the alternative from their dictatorship to be utter anarchy
until such a time as they decide the way to fix everything is simply to reset
the server--an act which apparently becomes necessary at least once a week.

The server resets should be in the above technical issue paragraph: Lately
these resets have caused crucial NPCs to be deleted entirely, including quest
NPCs and even shopkeepers for beginner equipment (for the combat-leery Mage no
less). These issues have not even been acknowledged let alone fixed for what
appears to be months now.

When an objection is raised, it always ends in drama. Clearly those
'inalienable' rights are, in fact, alien after all. Moderator abuse is rife in
this aspect, with a certain moderator having repeatedly disconnected a user
multiple times due to a simple disagreement, rather than dropping the issue or
instead using a temporary ban which (while still excessive in this case) could
have reduced on channel spam. When other users stand up to object to these
practices, the moderators routinely proceed to flame, whine and threaten any
free-speakers with revealing personal information, hyper- and hypocritical
personal judgements, and of course banning. This occurs even in the glaring
face of their ability to view room and channel logs on a whim which should
easily expose how any conflict occurs without doubt. These emotional defenses
are typically accompanied with some gaping, irrational flaw of logic that cries
out for more poignant counter-arguments, which only fans the flames of
controversy (or rather bald-faced contradiction) hotter. This negatively
impacts the players who are forced to feign ignorance of moderator activity for
fear of evading the scathing dirge of retaliation, and encourages cliques of
apathetic yes-men who are content to exploit the 'Adult-Oriented Sexuality'
rating as if this was a social networking website designed for quick real-life
hook-ups rather than an online multi-player role-playing text game designed for
an immersive fantasy world. Has it been mentioned that most of the moderators
speak as if they share an apartment together? Perhaps what they wanted instead
of subjecting themselves to other human beings was to just play Dungeons and
Dragons together.

This is a fantasy role-playing genre of MUD, and yet it emulates,
unintentionally, with such accuracy, something more along the lines of a
paranoid post-apocalyptic setting complete with anarchy torn at by tyranny from
all directions. While this MUD has a much lower learning curve than most, it is
not at all recommended for players new to MUDs who wish to have a positive
experience for their first outing. It seems a tragic shame, because this could
be an excellent MUD in its own right if only it returned to its roots and
remembered what it wanted to deliver and who it wanted to deliver it to.

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